what's on your wishlist?

[kaigou]

ETA: you can find all posts on this topic at http://kaigou.dreamwidth.org/tag/fantabulous+delicious+extravaganza

I've been watching the spiraling storms of raeg around del.icio.us and its utter fail, and there seem to be about six different places that people are randomly congregating about possibly doing a fandom version. Consider this a welcoming home if you want to link/share for all suggestions in one place. I don't know if anyone else is organizing this, but I'm not talking about the heavy-duty of code. I'm talking about something that has to happen before anyone puts code to screen, or else any project would end up just as messed-up as the current disaster.

Short version: first step is to figure out the fandom wishlist.

I do business analysis & an information architecture (BA/IA), so this isn't scary to me. Those titles just mean I figure/find out what clients (that's all ya'll) want (the BA part), and I figure out how to shape that into something meaningful and findable in a web application/site (the IA part). Basically, I organize stuff. Granted, something like this -- which is effectively tagging potentially the entire freaking intarweebs -- is much bigger than anything I've ever done personally... but that just means I'd be [very!!] happy to be joined by any other IA, or UX, or BA, folks. And, if for whatever reason real life gets in my way, at least this post would stand as a collection-point for the reference of whatever team does end up doing the project.

[NOTE: I'm not volunteering to run this project. I'm not even remotely considering running it. I'm just not a project manager. I will happily defer to, and assist, anyone who is and is willing to take on the lead position. Just be aware that I know where I'm good and PM ain't it.]

To keep this easy to organize for me and/or whomever ends up compiling it:

• PLEASE do ONE requirement/request PER REPLY. If you have five things that you really really think are important, do five replies. It's okay, this isn't spamming. It just makes it easier for the next step:
  
  
• If you see someone else has a request and it's the same as yours, just reply to that request with a +1 as the subject line. Consider it a kind of informal voting; the more +1 replies a request gets, obviously the more important it is to the community.
  
  
• Feel free to suggest something that del.icio.us didn't do, but that you've seen elsewhere. Be sure to add a link to a screenshot or the app itself so the requirements-gatherers (me and my kind) can see your suggestion in action, if that's at all possible.
  
  
• If you want to volunteer, please do that as a separate reply just so it doesn't get lost in the requests. Just put "VOLUNTEER" as the subject line of your reply, followed by the specific task. Like, say, "VOLUNTEER: php coding" or "VOLUNTEER: user interface design" or whatever. If you want to volunteer for something & you see someone else already has, just reply to their post with your own -- this way, everyone with similar skills gets grouped together, and we'll (hopefully) keep the noise-to-signal ratio down a little.
  
  
• Link, share, pass along, signal-boost, whatever you like.

I'm not going to reply to every single post, just to keep the noise level down, but I may reply if I'm not sure what you mean, for clarification. (If you're also a BA, IA, or UX person, feel free to jump in wherever, as you think's needed. The more the merrier.) See first comment & reply if you're interested in the ongoing googledoc with requests to Pinboard. Feel free to extract & copy to this list, if there's a wish there that you'd want recorded here, as well.

Also, anonymous comments are NOT being screened, so be sure to sign your post if you're volunteering, so we can find you! (You do not have to sign your posts if you're just adding to the general requirements list.)

Be civil, help keep the threads organized for easy finding later... and dream big.

Comments

[kaigou]

The one problem with caching (saving a copy of a site/page in the system) is the issue of updating: what if the original page gets edited? Not necessarily deleted, but perhaps updated, or the page-owner goes back and puts more stuff in... You could end up with multiple versions floating around (the site's version, and the 'real' version) and I do know some fans (especially writers) get cranky when people are reading the less-than-updated version. Fanfic writers do like some level of control, or at least the veneer of control, over the presentation of their fics.

Granted, it's not like a writer could feasibly disallow linking/storing (how would you know?) but just in a database sense, that'd be hell on the bandwidth to seek out the links and update the cached versions. Plus, that also means storage, and that seems to be something that might be best as a premium feature, b/c storage costs, especially potentially large storage like that.

Fundamentally, the easiest way to get around this is to note somewhere that if you're not logged in at that other site (the linked-to url), then you'll see warnings. If you are logged in, then the other site will check your credentials (regardless of what the linking-site gives/does), and you won't see warnings at all. It'd be just like you clicked a bookmark in your browser.

So, hmmm.

[drunkoffthestars]

Hm, I had a lot of feelings, and then-rechecked what you were saying. So, you are imagining the archiving feature being like a central database, and everyone who subscribes to that feature gets access to the databse, yeah? I think this is where I am getting Very Confused and/or we are talking at crosspurposes. Also, I have no idea how pinboard runs it.

I'm sort of thinking that the archiving feature would be both a premium feature and on a user-by-user basis, drastically increasing the diskspace needed, but then you don't have to keep fussing about with logins, etc. Also that way you don't have someone 'saving' a bookmark they aren't supposed to access, if you know what I mean.

Also, one of the points of me wanting the archiving would be to have saved those fic posts that were unlocked at the time I read/bookmarked them and then later got locked or deleted. I think worrying about updating is nice but ultimately defeats the point of having the archive in the first place, which is to have a copy saved for when the link dies, and I think it might be tricky to try and auto-evaluate if a link is dead or not.

Maybe the locked-bit is a terrible idea? I think having the archive feature have a way around age-warnings is critical, but maybe the locked thing is doomed to miserable complicated failure. Which I would be okay with. Which isn't to say that I'm not happy to keep discussing it! But I'm okay if the outcome of the conversation is NO THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

[kaigou]

ehehe... really, this is where we need a Real Developer to do a reality-check on what might be possible. And even then, lots of stuff is possible but not necessarily feasible (or sometimes, just not very wise, if it's a security issue, or a space issue, or whatever).

Actually, it seems to me that the one way in which "storing in app" could be a problem is WHAT gets stored... the old ugly of being shut down b/c something is sitting on the servers that's illegal in that jurisdiction. Seems to me that the easiest way to get around the bs legal stuff -- and to let people truly bookmark whatever the hell they damn please -- is to just save the links. It's not illegal to link to someone else's stuff (or else google would be in trouble for indexing all that shota, etc). It's when you get into "saving a copy" that you open yourself to ways that the crazy-ass censorship weenies could use to smack you.

(I hadn't actually thought in terms of who gets to see the archived content! I think I had loosely thought of it as "what I save, I see" and it'd only be visible to others based on my personal privacy settings for that link and/or my account. I suppose app-wide access would come into play, if your account were public and the link were also public.)

And as much as I get the need to save fic that might be deleted later -- seeing how we discuss this while on my todo list is an upcoming deletion all of an author's entries from a fic archive, sadness -- I think it's also asking a bit much of an application that's designed to save links. I mean, a good application is one that does what it does, and does it well; where applications start going wrong IMO is when they try to do everything, including the kitchen sink. So me, personally, in designing this kind of thing, I tend to say: what's the main goal? what's the primary purpose? and focus on how the application can do that, and just that. Not saying it can't do more later (possibly) but first it should do that primary thing really, really well.

Or shorter: I do see a definite value in archiving content, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's wise to try and buckle that onto an app whose purpose is to find content. It seems like that would be best as a counterpart... or maybe that's just another way to say, "that's a phase II, when the primary goal is satisfied completely, and there's a chance to expand". Or rather than "expand", to "develop a concurrent app that stores" that works in tandem with "an app that finds".

But still, a Real Developer might have input on all this that could shed a new/better light on things, too, so I'm going to keep it in the list of requirements, and see what conversation it spurs when I repost the (compiled, organized) list.